450 Seventh Avenue, also known as the Nelson Tower, is a 46-story building designed in 1931 by H. Craig Severance and located on the Northeast corner of 34th street and Seventh Avenue. The main entrance occupies one of the structural bays of the building and faces directly onto Seventh Avenue. In the new façade, three inch thick polished black granite was used to define two entrance piers which visually push back the ground floor retail spaces on either side. A thick horizontal bronze band defines the top of the entrance, providing a natural place for signage. A smaller scale band forms a canopy over the line of doors, which are angled in at each end. Monumental bronze and glass light fixtures illuminate the fluted tops of the piers and cast light up the base of the building.

The black piers open up a double height room that is the main lobby. It is a cool white marble box with one inch vertical reveals in the book-matched wall panels. These reveals continue up onto a griddled and stenciled ceiling from which hang two bronze and glass lanterns whose proportions continue those of the exterior fixtures. They light a white and grey banded terrazzo floor with a black granite border. Bronze mirror is placed on the end wall mullionated to match the entrance façade. This has the effect of doubling the number of lanterns and also of leading the eye into the interior of the plan.

The long curved front desk of black granite, cherry and bronze leads into a transitional space defined by an illuminated oculus. This space gives access to three areas: a side exit onto 34th street adjacent to the Pennsylvania Station subway entrance (which was developed as part of the project into a public pass-through coffee shop), an express package drop-off location, and the elevator lobby.

The telescoping of space continues into an elevator lobby where the twelve elevators are arranged in bronze frames on white marble walls with specially designed elevator button plaques and hall lanterns. The ceiling is articulated with perimeter cove lighting. On the rear wall is a photomural of the main arrival hall at the old Pennsylvania Station (surely the greatest lobby New York has ever possessed), which was adjacent to the Nelson Tower until it was demolished in 1963, and whose temporality one can contemplate while waiting for the elevator.